T
hen comes June. First there is too much rain, then not enough.
Tis year, strangely cool weather has slowed what is usually a rush toward a second cut harvest. Te rancher waits and watches
and checks the weather forecast and hopes all things will come together at last. But what if? What if the rains come, or the
river floods? What if a drought is just beginning? Tree weeks aſter the expected
harvest date, this hay remains uncut. As the weather has remained dry, it is not quite ready to cut. When the heads begin to form, indicating it is time to harvest, the summer rain showers begin. First, nearly an inch one day; the next, short-lived heavy showers. Ten no rain for 24 hours, and the cycle begins again. Finally, in July, the tractors move in again to cut, to bale, and to store.
I
n mid-August, almost every day we have ridden by the harvested bales,
stacked tightly beside one another. Tey glisten in the sun. My husband and I talk of how it
is that hay can spontaneously catch fire. If its moisture content reaches more than 22 percent, it not only loses forage quality, but has an in- creased risk of spontaneous combus- tion, caused by unseen, undetected chemical reaction. Tere are easily 100 bales out of that river bottom hay field. And all around the bales there are tall, dry prairie grasses. What a conflagration that would be. But a hurricane is brewing in
the Gulf of Mexico with possibly 25 inches of rain forecast for places near landfall. Were a fire to start in these bales as Hurricane Harvey arrives, such a rain would quickly extinguish it.
Hurricane Harvey does pay a visit.
Landfall puts us on the dirty side. Te evening of August 26, a blow- ing hard rain begins as we sit in the
funeral home – my husband attend- ing a service for a friend; I, playing hymns for the service on the funeral home’s surprisingly good digital keyboard. We rush to the truck in the
pouring rain when the funeral is over. Te next day, the rainwater begins
to gather in the ditches beside the road in front of our house. Weather forecasters warn of flooding on the
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